To Wander
by Rachelle Lo
Summary: Loki miscalculates his great escape, and crashes to Midgard, scarred. Jane finds him, SHIELD holds him, and Loki has an epiphany: he is utterly, emotionally, literally insane—and doesn't quite care.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **To Wander

**Rating: **T (for vivid imagery)

**Summary:** Loki miscalculates his great escape, and crashes to Midgard, scarred. Jane finds him, SHIELD holds him, and Loki has an epiphany: he is utterly, emotionally, literally insane—and doesn't quite care.

**Credit: **All Nordic poetry is taken from odin's-gift dot com, a fantastic site.

**Music: **Ludovico Einaudi.

This has been on the back burner for ages, so I figured I'd post it. Follows _The __Avengers_.

* * *

To Wander

CHAPTER ONE

_"Man's tongue is soft, and bone doth lack; yet a stroke therewith may break a man's back."_

_—Benjamin Franklin _

* * *

_Asgard always had underestimated his voice._

"´Úr er sk´yja grátr...ok skára þverrir ok hirðis hatr..."_ Loki sang softly, hoarsely._

_His audience was a thick, black serpent arched over his back, dripping poison. The serpent seemed almost to hesitate at the lovely sound—Loki could not see it, waiting an eternity in trepidation—before baring its mouth wider and deluging a string of venom._

_Venom hit his back, dripped down his spine. Loki thrashed and choked, then quieted. "_Þurs... er kvenna kvöl,_" he sang in wavering silver, "_ok kletta bui..."

_"He is mad," a guard murmured, from 'round the corner, and Loki could have smiled._

_His voice sweetened despite the acid. He sang of abundant harvests, and wind-torn journeys, and women's grief, and a small, swift horse. With his honey tongue made slicker by venom, he coaxed the two guards to blinking, to exhaustion, to enchanted sleep._

_Much too easy._

The guards really should be traded more quickly,_ Loki thought in agonized amusement. _How long must Asgard wait for an alarm if one shift is incapacitated? Really, now, whatever would you do if a prisoner escaped?

Æsir stupidity.

_The cave was narrow and angular, air ice's breath, and its ceiling opened directly to the chill night sky. Once, rain had fallen through, but instead of cool relief from torture, the water had diluted the venom and washed it down his body, stinging as it ran, aggravating the black grooves in his back._

_Bound by his arms, shoulders and elbows, Loki lay in a subservient bow. He could not see the serpent positioned above him, but oh, could he feel it. Evil, wretched worm._

_Now came the truly difficult part._

_Loki's voice darkened and lilted seductively. _"Ýr er bendr bogi..."_ he whispered, "_ok brotgjarnt járn..."_ The snake's head followed his lips like a snake-charmer's flute. It was canny and more than once spat scalding venom across his shoulders: a warning. The resulting sobs gave a throbbing, rich quality to the song. He sang more urgently, tempting it inch by inch. He wove a spell in his mouth, and the evil thing drifted closer to the song's origin with much the fascination of a devil to faith's bearer._

_Loki cringed as the serpent grazed his raw skin. Scales rubbed around his mouth._

_But he continued to sing, luring the thing closer still. It lay on his brow, hung by his ear._

_Now._

_He turned and bit._

_His jaw closed over the base of its head._

_The snake spasmed wildly, hissing and shrieking. Venom splashes. Loki screamed into scales. He dragged it closer and positioned the fangs over his bonds. The tail thrashed his back._

_It would have been a grave oversight indeed if Odin's bonds could be dissolved by the tormenter's venom._

_But__—__Loki had been singing to the snake for weeks. Under his voice, the fangs had sharpened, the poison fermented to sharpest, cutting wine. The venom is as potent as he could have possibly spelled it from his feeble position, with his magic bound by the chains._

_And so the bonds dissolved like slime under salt._

_He fell to the ground abruptly. The snake fell from his mouth, writhed, and lunged at Loki____—_who snatched it from the air like an arrow, turned, and struck it once___—_twice against the ground.

_It lay still._

_Loki's breaths rasped against the stone. A few moments, all he needed._

_The skylight spun dizzily above him. The room felt unnatural without the echoes of his screams._

_He stood shakily on his feet._

_A smile stole across his face._

"Reið er sitjandi sæla,_" he concluded softly, swaying unsteadily as he stepped over the guards. Saliva and blood dribbled down his mouth's corners; he wiped at it impatiently._

_His limbs shook like a fresh birthed foal's. Hideous burns marred his shoulders, neck, and bare torso from the poison made more potent by his own spells. But his self-inflicted wounds would heal sufficiently (although the adder's venom never truly faded). He would heal._

_He would escape. The first and only to flee the traitor's fate. No doubt they would charge after him, beg him to return, try to catch him and hold him here and smother him. _Stolen relic_. He had not yet served his sentence nor 'redeemed' himself. _To be stored until needed._ But why should they care what he did or went? Who were they, to toy with his life? He'd cut his own strings and dance away. Smile and spit in their faces (let them feel the poison). Take back everything he deserved._

_Everything he'd ever wanted._

_"A swift journey," laughed Loki,_

_"and the toil of a horse,_

_iter ræsir, ræsir!"_

_There was one last task left long undone in Asgard._

_To burn._

* * *

The radio didn't work this far out here. Shame. Jane needed music when driving alone, especially on long drives. Without music to fill her head, much worse things would—like thoughts.

Thoughts about astrophysics. Thoughts about uncomputable equations. Thoughts about New York. Thoughts about thunder.

"Stop it, Jane."

SHIELD had arranged for her to lecture at that convention in Colorado. They had been honest about that, at least. Jane didn't mind too much that they'd recommended (forced, really) her to the astrophysics convention; the pay had been good, the lecture surprisingly well received, and the exposure might help with her private funding. She really wasn't overly offended. It had been months ago, anyway. SHIELD had done it for her safety, for Thor's peace of mind.

Thor. That man. That Asgardian.

Jane blew out air. "You're just fine, Jane," she told herself. "If men were the brightest things in the universe, they'd be stars. You're a smart, capable woman no matter how a man treats you, or forgets about you, or, or, doesn't visit you, even though the evidence _clearly _states he has the means to travel here-and-there, and that's not going to change anytime soon, and you are _talking _to yourself in a truck in the middle of nowhere at _night..."_

She hit her steering wheel. "Gah!_"_

The night was gorgeous, at least. Dust was low, visibility high. The stars were out. Look, there was even a meteor—

No, that _wasn't_.

A giddy feeling bubbled in her chest. _Could this be—? _Jane immediately pulled over to the side of the road and ran around to her trunk, which held all of her equipment. After rustling around blind for a bit, she flicked on a flashlight, then flicked on a frequency.

"I don't believe it," she smiled, reading numbers. "I really don't."

The meteor held a slight azure tint around its flashing edges. It grew larger as it drew closer.

Jane threw and tied the tarp back over her equipment, then slid back in behind the wheel, setting a few taped-together devices in the passenger's seat. The truck grumbled to life again and headed back the way it came.

Jane glanced at the readings on her right every once in a while as she drove.

"Are you _kidding _me," she said after a while, and turned off-road. Her truck was a dinosaur. It had survived the great extinction and could take a little more dust.

And, finally, there it was. She turned off her engine.

The crater smoked at the edges, a heat shimmer over the cracked earth. A strange glint lay in the veins, and it took a moment for Jane to identify it as freshly-formed glass.

Silence and stillness.

"Thor?" she called out her window. Climbing out, her door shut with a loud _CLUMP. _She winced. "Thor?" she said more softly.

Jane fumbled for her phone and selected _Erik Selvig_.

_"This is Erik Selvig. I'm busy at the moment, so leave your name, number, and business—"_

Jane canceled. She took out a small taser Darcy had forced on her. (_"Jane, girl, with your bleeding heart, you need this if I'm not around.") _Sidling forward, she peered over the edge.

A dead man.

She shrieked into her sleeve and pulled back.

But...wait. She couldn't be sure he _was _dead. Jane flicked on her flashlight and took a deep rib-stretching breath. She looked over the rim once more.

The man was pale-skinned and dark haired, sprawled and limp. He wore distinctly strange clothing: a dark tunic and trousers, ripped and melted in many places, with intricate silver runnings down the seams. Not from Earth. Asgardian? Had he fallen like Thor?

Her eyes pulled away from his foreign clothing and focused on his face, turned away from her. From what she could see from this angle, his ear and jaw wore hideous scarring, and some of his limbs were twisted unnaturally. "Burns," she said. "Oh...you're injured."

That changed things.

She took a breath and slid into the crater, the ground warm through her jeans.

Was he even _breathing? _His side was still. Jane crouched close to him. "Sir? Sir?" She tapped his shoulder: standard procedure. No response. (Scene safe. Check ABC's.)

Gingerly, she reached out and placed two fingers on his neck. The white skin was chill and unyielding—rigor mortis? Jane had no desire to get closer to listen to his mouth for breathing, but if there was the slightest chance he was alive, she had an obligation to help him. Besides, wasn't she a woman of science? She should eat this stuff for breakfast.

She could stomach this; really, she could, she could. Thor probably could.

Jane sucked in, closed her eyes, and leaned over the man's mouth. Shallow breaths rasped in her ear. A pulse beat under her fingers. Not a dead man, then. She dared open her eyes, too close to his face.

His _face_.

Her body reacted before her mind did. Her throat swelled closed, her skin crawled, her body lurched away. Scrambling back, she clawed out her phone from her jacket pocket.

She selected _Phil Coulson,_ and waited, her heart in her mouth.

After four rings, it picked up.

* * *

**Thanks for reading! If you leave a detailed review, please include a PG-rated (child-appropriate) story of your own that you'd like me to review in return. I think it's only fair to review for you if you review for me.**


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Many thanks to: Mitthiamaroc, Guest, dreamsingreen, Imaginarian, and Blue-Box-Kid. You are the reason this chapter is up.

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

"Weather forecast for tonight: dark."

—George Carlin

* * *

_The slender trees were as graceful as maidens, the air as light as winter's breath. How long had it been: weeks, months? The cliff blended seamlessly into the forest below, and Loki did not find it difficult to navigate a way down the naked rock. It felt as though years had gone by since he has seen free sky. The freedom spun his head more than thick mead._

_Loki could breathe again. Think logically._

_Yes, he hated Asgard. Norns, how he did. He wanted them to feel what torments he'd faced, what hell they had carelessly subjected him to. But was that plausible in the state he was in?_

_He had meant to burn Asgard. It was only logical, if only from a military standpoint. A feint, so he could escape through the unseen paths between __Yggdrasil's branches_ without Heimdall's piercing eye.

_But now, as the cool air stung his bare, melted shoulders and slapped him sober..._

_Who was he fooling? Burning Asgard would only get him caught._

_The forest accepted his sigh into their branches; he was, at the moment, nearer to nature than __Æsir (or whatever he unspoken was), raw and bleeding like rubbed pine bark. His head hurt, and his eyes stung inexplicably._

_Pain heralded birth and death, did it not? The pain of a woman in childbearing, the pain of a warrior's last battle-breath. The death of the past, birth of the future. There was no middle ground to remember. A beautiful concept, in a sense. __What were countless decades of obedience and loyalty but things to be forgotten? Now his pain, Loki Son of None's pain, heralded a fresh future, barren of ties or love._

_A pathetic sound slipped past his lips._

_They had not visited him once in that hell they sent him to, and it scalded him more than he will ever admit. So many wrongs, poisons, venomous_ _betrayals, splintered trusts, slaughtered kinship and they had repaid decades of farce with silence and indifference._

_"One word, one tear, might have changed me, Odin," Loki snarled quietly. He had been like a dog, craving any morsel of attention._

_No. He would not burn Asgard. What had Asgard done to him?_

_Nothing. Precisely that. __He would repay Asgard's disdain with the same. Loathing from afar, for t__he opposite of love was not hatred, but indifference._

_Loki imagined a day when he could think of Odin, or Frigga, or Thor, or Sif or any __Æsir, and could feel no stab in his gut, or desperate hatred in his belly, only peaceful indifference. It was a soothing thought._

_(A vain dream. The black poison trails lashing his back and the dark roped burns on his face would ensure he would be reminded of who had betrayed and disfigured him each and every time he saw his reflection.)_

_Reaching into the space around him only he can touch, he clothes his bare body with a dark, silver-seamed tunic._

_Quietly, he reaches out in his mind, ignoring the Gatekeeper's gaze as it rakes his soul with sudden burning acuity, and harnesses the broken energy threads of the bifröst to guide his melting between the Yggdrasil branches._

* * *

A phone rang with an annoying, repeating blip. He recognized it as his.

Phil clawed blindly until his fingers found a nightstand, then his phone, and he brought it to his ear. "Yes?" he rasped.

"_Oh thank goodness, Coulson, I thought you wouldn't pick up, and I really don't know who else to call_—"

"Slow down. Who is this?"

_"I'm sorry, did I wake you? This is Jane Foster, and_—"

Coulson picked out distress and worry. His analytical mind snapped him awake. Jane Foster: radio astrologist, astrophysicist, kind woman and a stunning scientist. What was more, she had an unyielding core of resolve; that alone had pushed her through many years of unfunded and disparaged research. And something had shaken her.

"Start from the beginning, Miss Foster. If you give me the details, I'm sure I can help you."

_"I was on my way back from the Colorado conference, and I saw a meteor. I'm at the impact site, Phil. Like Thor's. There's a man in there. Unconscious."_

"And it's not Thor."

_"No. Coulson, I checked. It's Loki."_

Loki. Phil straightened as an impressive jolt of pain hit his chest.

_The Destroyer-inspired weapon almost slipped from his grasp as his body slackened— inadvertently, unwillingly —and he crumpled to the ground much as he imagined his lung now doing the same_ —

Loki — he had stabbed him. A spear through his chest. He should be dead. Why wasn't he?

For the first time, his eyes registered his surroundings. (What kind of professional was he, to have been ignorant this long?) A white hospital room and a pristine bed. Bandages across his chest and a line in his wrist.

_"Phil? Are you there."_

"Yes, Miss Foster," he managed.

_"I'm alone out here. He's not moving right now, he's severely burned and his legs are twisted, but...Phil, what do I do?"_

He could speak once he could breathe. "Miss Foster—"

_"Call me Jane."_

Funny what women thought was important at times like these. "Jane, if you're on your way back from a conference, then you have two SHIELD vehicles trailing you home. Stay where you're at, keep your car lights on. And whatever you do, do _not _hang up, all right? This man is dangerous even when injured, Mi—Jane."

_"I'm not even going to ask about your people stalking me, and I know how dangerous he is: I saw the New York coverage."_

New York?

_"Phil, I _—_thank you. I've been freaking out, I know, I just_—oh, _did he move? No, no, he's out. Phil, why is he here? I thought he was sent back to Asgard_—_" _Her breath was quick, but she wasn't panicking. Strong woman.

"Go get in your truck, Jane. Drive away, but not too far. Your back up will be there promptly. Tell me about your research. Keep talking to me."

While she told him of the Rosen-bridge and calculations and pathways through heaven, Phil slowly straightened and attempted sitting up, Jane's nervous chatter strangely soothing in his ear. He didn't let the slow, burning pain in his chest leak into his voice.

He supposed there were worse ways to wake up and realize he was still among the living.


	3. Chapter 3

Many thanks to: Imaginarian, CheetahBlackCat, Platina, dreamsingreen, and Aruyn.

I also heavily edited the previous chapter. It was a draft written long ago.

* * *

To Wander

CHAPTER THREE

"We are what we believe we are."

-C. S. Lewis

* * *

_The second he had entered the space-between-worlds, Loki had realized his mistake._

_'Realized' was a euphemism: 'experienced cold, wrenching horror' was more appropriate._

_Normally, when Loki traveled along his secret paths, he used a stabilizing element to avoid being torn apart by the universe or getting lost between worlds. The __bifröst__ often functioned as that stabilizing element, so that while Loki did not explicitly use it to travel, he used it as a landmark to guide himself._

_The __bifröst__ was broken._

_How had he forgotten that? (Oh yes, remedial torture and brokered insanity.)_

_Unless Loki wanted to risk wandering around in the Void once more (and that was an experience he genuinely had no desire to repeat), he had to grasp the broken strands and let the __bifröst deposit him somewhere in the Nine Realms. All he could do was trust in luck and hope the __bifröst didn't land him in Odin's throne hall._

_Of course, his luck had never been enviable._

___He was thrown, helpless as a babe in a river, to wherever the __bifröst willed._

_Ah—t__he last coordinates of the __bifröst had been on Midgard, hadn't they?_

_Damn._

* * *

After the initial panic faded, Jane was drawn closer to the crater by morbid curiosity. Coulson was in her ear, of course, and she was talking half-heartedly about her theories, but her feet drew her closer.

Loki was Thor's brother, wasn't he? They didn't look anything alike. They didn't _act _anything alike. (That was the understatement of the century.) If they were both princes, why did they turn out so different?

The mottled figure in the crater stirred feebly, and Jane's brain shorted out in panic. After a few moments, Loki stilled, and Jane relaxed.

She looked down at the taped-together radio telescope still in her hand. It had taken some finagling to develop one that was hand-sized and could still process a high signal-to-noise ratio. She was very proud of it, and hoped to patent it to some larger antenna facilities.

Right now, the readings were fluctuating randomly and at frequencies normally seen in deep space.

_"Jane, your backup should be there by now," _Coulson said.

"Yeah? Well, your buddies aren't very professional," Jane said absently, absorbed in the readings. Was it coming from—?

_"I have a bad feeling about this, Miss Foster. You should drive away."_

"Phil, this guy isn't moving any time soon. He has severe burns and broken limbs. I think I'll stay and take some readings." What was she saying? A rational person would run away screaming, but these baselines...ah, her curiosity got the better of her. "Besides, I have a taser."

_"Miss Foster, this man is dangerous. I am currently lying in a hospital bed recovering from a stab wound he gave me."_

His voice's breathless quality made sense now. "And I called you?" Jane cried. "I am so sorry! You should be resting or something on morphine—"

_"That's not the point, Miss Foster." _Frustration roughened his voice. Jane could practically hear him thinking, _Women._

"Phil, trust me on this one; I'm on site. And these readings...these baselines, they're fuzzy but the overall picture is something only the Very Large Array and the VLBA have seen near a black hole in the center of our galaxy: a jet of particles powered _by_ the black hole. It's amazing. I can see it right here. And I can't be sure, but the kicker is I think the origin, in this case, is Loki."

_"Well, that's very scientific, but —"_

Loki moved. Perhaps it was the sound of his name.

Jane dropped into an animalistic crouch. Faint hissing sounded from the center of the crater as Loki slowly, torturously turned his neck. His narrow eyes, dark and wet and highlighted by vicious scars, opened a margin as they met Jane's. A smile slicked across his face as Jane shrank back, and a coughing laugh spilled from his mouth.

"Hello," he greeted.

Jane leveled her taser.

Another cough. "Oh, I hardly think that's necessary," Loki rasped. "Jane Foster. Crown jewel of Midgard."

Coulson was yelling in her ear. "It's fine, Phil," she whispered.

She watched him warily; Loki stared back through slitted eyes.

Two vans screeched to a halt behind her, and a chopper swooped low over their heads. A SHIELD agent placed a hand on Jane's shoulder, and she straightened up. She heard a soft moan and turned to see agents restraining Loki and pulling him upright. The mischief-maker delivered one more wet smirk before his eyes rolled back, and his body went slack.

* * *

Pepper snapped her phone shut with a crisp snick.

"Tony," she called drily. "Your mother called."

A bang and a muffled curse.


End file.
